Guardian Foundation 2011-12

The Guardian Foundation continues it's work with journalists, editors and managers overseas, including funding the Guardian training scheme in Johannesburg and collaborating to found a European Press Prize

C.P. Scott, former editor of the Manchester Guardian, outlined the paper's principles in his celebrated centenary leader on 5 May 1921

Monday 22 October 2012 11.03 EDT
First published on Monday 22 October 2012 11.03 EDT

The Guardian Foundation has been the overseas training arm of the Guardian for two decades. It aims to put experienced Guardian journalists, editors and managers in touch with their opposite numbers in papers or on websites overseas, sharing experience and wisdom.

That work continued unabated in 2011-12 under its two co-directors, Peter Preston and Ian Wright. We welcomed journalists from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Argentina to Kings Place. We sent journalists to work and advise in Cairo, Sofia, Maribor (amongst other far flung places). We cemented existing relations with partners such as the Soros Foundation, the BBC World Service Trust, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Transition Online in Prague. We continued our funding of the Mail and Guardian's training scheme in Johannesburg.

All this is rewarding activity on both sides. The Guardian makes friends and influences people across Europe and the wider world; but it also helps explain our core values to journalists and editors in every country we touch. And now, perhaps, that reputation may increase still further as a result of the year's most significant new initiative.

In July 2011, four of Europe's most important media foundations (owners of market-leading papers in Denmark and Holland) asked us to a meeting in Amsterdam aimed at developing more co-operation between foundations who believe in quality journalism.

From that meeting came the idea of founding a European Press Prize open to journalism from the 47 nations that make up the Council of Europe. That project has developed at a startling rate. The first contest - for journalism in four different categories, each of them for 10,000 euros - is underway from July 1. The first prize-giving is scheduled in Amsterdam on February 26, 2013, after the first judging panel, chaired by Sir Harold Evans, has completed its deliberations.

It's an exciting idea. The Reuters Foundation has joined our ranks; more foundations are knocking on the door. And the message it conveys is clear: that journalism, good journalism, is vital to a free society - or, in this case, 47 different societies.